The series was well-attended and the CDs of the performances are nigh unto unfindable today without either a lot of money and patience or a willingness to break the law (and an awful lot of patience). However, it is well worth finding copies — they represent extremely well how video gamemusic has evolved past being simply background noise into being a rich and complex source of auralentertainment. Speaking as (finally!) the proud owner of every one of these discs, I must heartily recommend them.

What is most interesting for me is the fact that the concerts were performed years before it began to be accepted that the music of video games could be just as respectable as music from any other source — the composers and performers had, in many cases, just as much classical training as those of many other media. Today, this fact is more widely accepted, and similar concert series are performed across the world; however, in 1991, it is hard to conceive of there being daring enough executives at Nintendo to allow such a series.

Nevertheless, the Orchestral Game Concerts represent a giant development in the history of video gamemusic. They showed that there was actually appreciable music in games, and that there was a fan base large enough to support continuing to improve music and sound development in games. Overall, the gaming world is far richer for it.